Friday, October 16, 2015

The Abandoned Refrigerators of Katrina

Hurricane Katrina, that ravaged the Gulf Coast and the entire city of
New Orleans in the summer of 2005, ruined a lot of household appliances
but damaged refrigerators belonged to an entirely different realm of
problems.
When Katrina forced people to evacuate their homes, a
few residents emptied their refrigerators before they evacuated, but
most of them left theirs with all the food inside. They didn’t know that
they would lose power for weeks, or that they wouldn’t be able to
return home until a month or more later. All this time the food sat in
the stifling 90-degree heat inside the refrigerators and rotted.
Vegetables and fruits, meat and fish had all turned into a disgusting
slimy mess teeming with maggots.

People who returned and opened their refrigerators immediately
regretted. The food had become so toxic that it melted plastic, corroded
metal, and dissolved rubber refrigerator liners. The smell was
unbearable. Word got out and many didn’t open their refrigerators at
all. They sealed them shut with duct tape and pushed the box of horrors
out of their homes and into the curb. Some people tried and found it
impossible to fully clean their refrigerators. The smell just wouldn’t
go. Eventually, refrigerators started to crop up in the streets like
mushrooms after the rain, even in parts of the city that wasn’t flooded.
An overwhelming smell of death and decay hung over the entire city.
The
putrid task of disposing these machines fell upon the local government,
who assigned a special crew for the job. These men were trained in the
handling of hazardous materials and were armed with special equipment
and hazmat suits. But the destruction throughout the region was so
extensive that the clean-up operation took months to complete. Sitting
there outside the homes, the abandoned refrigerators began to attract
graffiti and soon became a platform for art and personal expression. As
time dragged on some began to be decorated with festive Christmas
ornaments and salutations. For months the spray-painted refrigerators
became a ubiquitous symbol of post-Katrina New Orleans. People began
photographing Katrina refrigerators, and organizing exhibitions
featuring these photographs. Even books were written about them. That
year at Halloween parties, Katrina refrigerators were a popular costume
idea.
Eventually the refrigerators were hauled to a scrapyard to
be recycled. As many as 150,000 refrigerators were dumped at the
Gentilly Landfill by December 2005. By early 2006, the last of them were
gone.

A "Bobcat" picks up dead domestic refrigerator and other debris.

A “Bobcat” dumps a refrigerator on a landfill in New Orleans.

Thousands of refrigerators lie on a landfill in 2006 waiting to be scrapped.

Thousands of refrigerators lie on a landfill in 2006 waiting to be scrapped.